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Ducks stay close to home to fill coaching holes

By Rob Moseley

The Register-Guard

Appeared in print: Friday, May 1, 2009, page C1

A couple of local boys made good Thursday.

Moving to fill the vacancy created by his own promotion to head coach, UO football coach Chip Kelly hired Marshfield graduate Mark Helfrich as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Helfrich, 35, is an Oregon native and former UO graduate assistant who comes to the Ducks after three seasons at Colorado.

Helfrich will focus on the passing game, with longtime UO assistant Steve Greatwood a Churchill High graduate adding the title of running game coordinator to his duties as offensive line coach.

Contract terms for Helfrich were not immediately available, though he’s expected to receive a multi-year deal.

Helfrich was in Eugene to interview with the Ducks on Tuesday and Wednesday, was back in Colorado on Thursday and planned to return to Oregon today and attend Saturday’s Spring Game.

“I’m very excited in a lot of ways,” Helfrich said in a conference call with reporters. “I’m very humbled and excited about the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of a lot of guys I’ve known and respected.”

Helfrich grew up rooting for Oregon, and recalled attending the 13-13 tie with Notre Dame in 1982. A quarterback at Marshfield, he attended a camp run by Mike Bellotti at Oregon but passed up the chance to walk on with the Ducks in order to enroll at Southern Oregon.

Helfrich served as a graduate assistant with the Ducks in 1997, then followed former UO offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter to Boise State and on to Arizona State as quarterbacks coach. He was named passing game coordinator for the final three years of his five-year term at ASU before joining the staff at Colorado in 2006.

“Mark not only impressed me as a very intelligent individual but as someone who utilized that knowledge to coach quarterbacks at both Boise State and Arizona State,” Kelly said in a prepared statement. “He has earned a national reputation for developing quarterbacks and played a key role in the emergence of Andrew Walter and Rudy Carpenter at Arizona State. He was highly recommended by everyone he has ever worked with, and I view him as one of the rising offensive minds in this game.”

Walter had a record-setting career at ASU under Helfrich’s tutelage, though Colorado’s offenses the past three years have been among the worst in the Big 12 Conference.

Bellotti contacted Helfrich about possibly coming to Oregon before Kelly was hired in 2007, but Helfrich declined to leave the Buffaloes after only one season.

“Not that this is great timing, but this business has so many variables that go into a situation,” Helfrich said. “At that time we came off a bad year here. We had just had our son, and to be honest, I wasn’t really (comfortable) leaving this situation.”

Though Helfrich has the title of offensive coordinator with the Ducks, he said it’s not yet decided whether he or Kelly will call plays for the offense in the fall.

“We’ll see,” Helfrich said. “We’ve talked about that. I’m a company guy, I’m a team guy, I’m a loyal guy, and if that’s something that Chip wants to do, that’s certainly something that’s a bridge that we’ll cross, that we’ll talk about.

“If he wants me to coordinate the postgame meal, it’ll be a darn good postgame meal. And if he wants me to call plays against USC, I’ve done that, too.”

Helfrich has had limited experience in the spread system Oregon runs under Kelly. But, he said, “that’s not something that I see as a huge learning curve-type situation.”

“First and foremost, you’ve got to run the ball to be successful,” Helfrich said, and in that regard he enters a prime situation. Oregon has had the two most prolific rushing seasons in school history the past two years, aided in no small part by the success of the offensive line under Greatwood.

“I credit much of our success running the football the last two seasons to Steve Greatwood, which is why I feel he has earned the opportunity to expand his role with the Oregon offense,” Kelly added.

“There is no doubt we benefitted from outstanding players at key positions that contributed to our unprecedented success on the ground, but Steve’s ability to develop some of the best offensive linemen in school history cannot be overlooked.”